Fig. 2. Outline of the social-ecological system. We identified three tenure and management regimes (a) in the landscape: coffee plantations, reserved forests, and protected areas. In each of these three tenure and management regimes, workers and forest dwellers have their habitations, in small hamlets called colonies (b). Rights over the resources are controlled by the owner in the coffee plantation (c), and by the Karnataka Forest Department in the reserved forests and protected areas (d). Some of the workers and forest dwellers are part of forest management groups, called Joint Forest Management Committees (e) in reserved forests and Eco-Development Committees (f) in the protected area. For the workers, access to the resources, i.e., fuel wood, of the coffee plantation can be negotiated with the owner although persons not employed in the plantation are generally excluded (g). Access to the resources, i.e., fuel wood, nontimber forest products, is regulated in the reserve forest (h) and restricted (no legal access) in the national park (i). As a result, with the exception of the fuel wood for the workers, the reserved forest is the only accessible source of forest goods to the local communities.